Greenies

that is to break their morale. A demoralized soldier is a shitty soldier. A good way to demoralize them is to take away their illusion of safety and security. The special forces teams are down there doing that right now. They're gunning those earthlings down right in the middle of their own camp. They're showing them that they won't be safe anywhere on our planet. We're helping with that by cutting off their escape route. They're down there thinking that at least if they get wounded, someone will take them to safety. When we down that shuttle that illusion will be shattered. It will chip away at their morale a little bit more. It will also force their commander to do what we want in this battle.'

'And what's that?'

'It will force him to react to what we are doing instead of the other way around. When you have to react to the other guy's moves you aren't able to make any of your own. That's why we're going after that shuttle. Not because it will make a difference in and of itself, but because it will be just another thing that they'll be forced to adapt to.'

'I guess that makes sense,' Matt said, after thinking it over for a second. 'It don't mean I have to like it though.'

'No, it don't mean you have to like it or brag about it in the troop club tonight. But we do have to do it and there is a good reason for it, so let's get it done. How's our course looking?'

'Right on the line,' he said. 'We're gonna pull up in four two seconds and climb to angels one five, which will be the intercept altitude.'

'Copy that. Count me off.'

'Counting off,' Matt said. 'Four zero seconds.' A five second pause. 'Three five seconds.'

The clock ticked down to zero. Brian pulled up and pushed the throttle lever to full military power. The semi- rocket engine screamed with horsepower and the Mosquito shot upward at a nearly seventy-degree angle of attack. Beside and behind them their wingman matched their maneuver. Matt, feeling the exhilarating push of acceleration slamming him backwards, forgot his uneasiness about their mission for the moment and felt a grin spreading on his face. Over the past few months he had learned to love the violent maneuvering of the Mosquito in flight, had learned to relish the sensation of flight unfettered by artificial gravity and inertial damping.

'They've got to have us on their screens by now,' Brian said. 'No sense in maintaining radio silence any longer. Get me our wing on the line.'

Matt's fingers flew over the computer screen, quickly paging through two different menus and sub-menus to set the frequency. 'You're live on the air, boss,' he told him, going back to the attack screen.

Brian pushed the transmit button on his stick. 'Alpha two from alpha one,' he said. 'You out there, Carlton?'

'I'm here,' answered Rick Carlton, the pilot of the other Mosquito. 'We've got a solid track on target. Tell your newbie good mapping.'

'Naw,' Brian answered, fully aware that Matt was monitoring the transmission. 'Wouldn't want him to start thinking he's worth a shit, would I?'

'I guess not,' Carlton said with a chuckle.

'Let's separate a little bit as we move in,' Brian said, turning to business. 'Remember, have your sis go for the engines and the fuel tanks. That fuckin thing is a lot bigger than an APC.'

'We're on it,' Carlton said. 'I've got your rear.'

'Three zero to intercept,' Matt announced from behind him. 'I'm bringing the lasers on line now.' He pushed the charge button and energy began to feed from the APU into the weapons. He felt a little chill inside as he realized that this was lethal energy that he was loading and not the training charge they normally used. They were really going to shoot at an enemy. They were really going to try to kill a shuttle full of earthlings.

'How's the target looking?' Brian asked. 'They have to have us on screen by now. We're lit up like a fuckin firework and transmitting radio signals. Any signs of evasive maneuvering?'

'Nothing,' Matt answered. 'It's holding its course. Not even any radio transmissions. You'd think they'd be screaming their asses off for help by now.'

'Well, there's not really anyone that can help them. Maybe they're hoping we're not really hostile.'

'Maybe,' Matt said with a shrug. 'Two zero seconds. Looks like we're drifting right a bit.'

'Evening it up,' Brian told him, adjusting his course.

A few seconds later they reached fifteen thousand meters of altitude, just a thousand below the maximum operational altitude of the aircraft, and Brian leveled them off. Their speed increased and they went screaming towards their target, heading towards it at about forty-five degrees off of head-on. Its speed had slowed considerably — down to only 800 kilometers per hour — and its rate of descent had slowed as well. It was, in short, a nice juicy target coming neatly into their kill zone.

'In range,' Matt announced when it crossed the invisible line. 'Opening fire.'

'Take 'em down, kid,' Brian said, his eyes watching his display. 'Let's see if that training was wasted on you or not.'

It was absurdly easy to do, much easier than acquiring and engaging an armored vehicle on the ground. He moved his head to the left and put the targeting recticles on the bright red and white orbital craft in the middle of his screen. The vehicle was huge on his display and his head movements weren't hampered by G-forces. He trained the recticles near the rear, where the main engine and fuel tank would be, and fired both cannons simultaneously. Slightly behind and below them, Steve Winchester, the sis of the wing Mosquito, did the same a few seconds later.

The laser energy was intense, designed to burn through the thick steel armor of a tank or APC. The thin hull of the shuttlecraft didn't stand a chance against it. The energy burned into the engine and destroyed two of the combustion chambers that provided the thrust. Another beam burned into the fuel tank itself, causing a rupture of both the hydrogen and the oxygen. The entire rear of the shuttle exploded in a flash of bright light and strewn debris. The front half of the shuttle, deprived of pressure, gravitation, power, and air, went tumbling downward, falling like the proverbial rock. It would fall for nearly five minutes before impacting the Martian surface hard enough to leave a crater sixty meters across.

'That's a kill,' Matt announced, watching in awe at the nothingness that had replaced the shuttle on his display.

'Yep,' Brian said with a nod. 'Looks like a kill to me. Good job.'

The two aircraft turned around a moment later and began heading for home.

'They shot down the fucking shuttle!' Major Wilde told General Wrath up in the CIC.

Wrath looked at his aide for a moment, his mind refusing to process what he was being told. 'Who shot down what shuttle?' he finally asked.

'The greenies!' Wilde said, his hands wringing nervously. 'They shot down the evac shuttle that was on its way to the Eden LZ!'

'How did they do that?' Wrath asked, perplexed. 'Do they have a mobile SAL set up out in the wastelands somewhere? Surely the greenies aren't that lucky.'

'They used aircraft. We think they were those damn Mosquitoes. The Eden landing ship picked up the infrared signatures of two of them climbing off the deck two hundred kilometers east of their position. They intercepted the shuttle as it was making its descent and blew it up with anti-tank lasers.'

'Jesus,' Wrath said, feeling a fury starting within him. His intelligence reports had assured him that the Martian aircraft were incapable of bringing down anything larger than a hover. 'Are there any survivors?'

'No, sir. Eden tracked the wreckage all the way in. It hit hard. And there are no escape pods in an evac shuttle.'

Wrath shook his head angrily. 'Those goddamn terrorists,' he swore. 'Sniping at us from the hills, shooting down unarmed evac shuttles full of doctors and medics! They're barbarians!'

'Yes, sir,' Wilde said. 'And that's not all. We have more reports of contact between greenie forces and our perimeter patrols at all four LZ's. There have now been mortar attacks on all four as well. Casualties are mounting, sir. At the Proctor LZ a fuel storage tank for one of the graders was hit with a mortar round and exploded. Eight of the engineers were killed and more than twenty are wounded. At Libby an entire platoon was engaged from three different directions. Twenty of them are confirmed killed, the rest are wounded and still lying where they fell because the area is not secure enough to haul them out. And then there's the evac shuttles heading for the other three LZ's.'